Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Urban development that does not cater to accessible and affordable social housing means that the
poor will be unable to service the needs of the rich in their gated communities and condos.
Developers should not be allowed to build unless they are also prepared to provide sustaining
infrastructure close to the community and not in some far-flung place. Instead of focusing on
eyesore vistas of squatters and the inconvenience of tricycles and PUVs that get in the way of dark-
tinted SUVs, the aim should be to invest in employment in the source communities of migrants
and in public transport that reduces the commute to work for all. The poor cannot be made
invisible. People live in squalor in cities, not by choice but because they are not valued as a
community asset. Slum dwellers are frightening, but their impoverished relatives in the provinces
are romanticized as indigenous people.
Not everyone who has made their fortune is lost in a dizzy pursuit of consumption and
affected gaiety. First-generation wealth generators, in particular, have better grounding and
understanding of turning adversity into opportunity. They tend to have a closer bond with the
people who help make their enterprise a success. Instead of using corporate social responsibility
as an adjunct of the PR department, their values and actions in sustaining communities are an
integral part of the business model.
Pay living wages, not the minimum. Create opportunity through social enterprise. Take the
lack of toilets and bathing facilities, for example. Small amounts of capital, low-cost design and
municipal support can not only entice people into starting such businesses but also solve a dire
community need. Microfinance, especially in the hands of women, can turn a squatter into an
entrepreneur.
Agriculture can move from being a backbreaking source of bare subsistence to a mode
where more of the value added is at source and the stranglehold of middlemen and lack of paths
to markets are overcome. What is lacking is not the will of the poor to work, it is the absence of
modern farming methods, poor knowledge of higher-yield crops, and ineffective husbandry of
natural resources. As consumers, we have to learn to value, afford dignity and provide deserving
returns to those who bend their backs so that we can stand straight.
I have learned a few salutary lessons from the poor. In an impending natural disaster, I saw
well-to-do people clear the supermarkets of goods as soon as the shelves were stocked. In wet
markets in the same city, the poor bought only what they needed. They never ran out of stock. In
another scene, we carefully distributed aid based on our perception of who needed what. We
returned only to find that the recipients redistributed what we gave them. And then there was the
case of a lady squatter who lost everything in a typhoon. She used a third of our donation to house
her family; the rest went into a roadside stall. She now earns seven times what we gave her per
month!
Unleashing the potential of the poor is a far better safeguard than living with armed security guards.
Asif Ahmad is the ambassador of the United Kingdom, which is committed to spending 0.7 percent
of GNI as development assistance.
Source: https://opinion.inquirer.net/83968/the-burden-of-the-poor